A couple of weeks ago, I was watching Once Upon a Time in America in which Treat Williams has a minor role. By 1984, Williams had starring roles in Hair and Prince of the City. He had worked with Steven Spielberg, Milos Forman and Sidney Lumet in just three years. That’s a resume many actors would’ve killed to have, even if the movies weren’t that memorable. So, why take a supporting role that equates to only a handful of scenes?
Because Williams was an actor’s actor, taking on any role, no matter how big or small. Who wouldn’t want to work with Robert DeNiro and Segio Leone, on what would become his final movie. Williams played a union organizer who comes close to being burned alive before he is saved by the Jewish criminals who want him to go into a partnership with them.
At the start of his film career, Williams went from a free-spirit long-haired singing hippie to a tough-as-nails mean-spirited pro-American service member to a corrupt NYPD narcotics detective struggling with his own guilt. It showed he had a lot of range as an actor. He could play the good guy. He could play the bad guy. He could also make us laugh. One of his quirks as Cpl. Chuck Sitarski in the screwball comedy is that he hates eggs with a vengeance. In the 1998 sea monster flick Deep Rising, his catchphrase “Now what?!” every time something seems to go wrong showed a man who seemed to take every problem with the frustration of how he can’t have an even break.
Williams died on June 12 following injuries from a collision as he was riding a motorcycle in Dorset, Vt. An actor of the stage and screen, he appeared in movies where he was the lead or as in America where he had a supporting As actor John Morton, who played Dak Raltor in The Empire Strikes Back, has said Williams “decided he was going to come and hang out on the set, which he did, and he appeared in those ice planet scenes as one of the lieutenants or officers in the Rebel forces. And I’m sure that there is no credit for him at all and he didn’t have a character or anything, but he just said, ‘Hey, this looks like a lotta fun and I’d kinda like to be a part of it, mind if I take a role of an extra?’ Everybody said, ‘Yeah!’ So here you have this Hollywood star who just decided, for probably no salary, just to hang out for a few scenes and was quite happy with the role of an extra in Empire Strikes Back. And that was kinda the way it was.”
Some other actors would’ve demanded bigger roles in a movie like, but Williams had over 120 acting credits. Sometimes, an actor just wants to act. Canadian actor William B. Davis, who famously played the Cigarette Smoking Man on The X-Files, once said actors are just lucky to get gigs. Sometimes those “gigs” turn out to be big roles. But sometimes the smaller roles are the most impressive.
Williams famously played Hollywood businessman and agent Michael Ovitz in HBO’s The Late Shift getting rave reviews for what some people thought was an uneven movie. He had also a memorial role as “Critical” Bill Dolittle in Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead, a crime thriller that was unfavorably compared to Pulp Fiction. Williams played an over-the-top criminal who got his kicks by punching dead bodies at the funeral parlor where he worked.
Other roles included D.B. Cooper in The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper and appearing in the cult classic Dead Heat, a mixture of the comedy, horror, buddy cop genres. He also famously appeared alongside Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford in The Devil’s Own, a movie that was plagued with a lot of production problems. On TV, he did voice work for Batman: The Animated Series and famously appeared in Tom Hanks’ first directing job on an episode of Tales from the Crypt, where he kills Hanks’ character by throwing him head-first into a TV set.
Other TV roles included Stanley Kowalski alongside Ann-Margaret and his Hair co-star Beverly D’Angelo in A Streetcar Named Desire and as Dr. Andrew Brown in the critically acclaimed WB show Everwood which ran for four seasons. Unfortunately, the show was canceled in 2006 as the WB and UPN merged to form The CW. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. Williams continued to act in TV and movie roles with recurring roles on Chicago Fire and Blue Bloods and his final film role was in the 2021 12 Mighty Orphans and even appearing in the Hallmark holiday movies The Christmas House and its sequel.
He received a Golden Globe nomination for Hair and Emmy nominations for Streetcar and Late Shift, yet never won. Married to his wife, Pam Van Sant, since 1988, he learned to fly and SCUBA dive when he wasn’t acting. He became a certified flight instructor and diving instructor. According to Vermont State Police, Williams was driving in the northbound lane of Vermont Route 30 when a 2008 Honda Element in the southbound lane turned in his path and he was unable to stop or swerve in time.
Williams was airlifted to the Albany Medical Center in upstate New York where he was pronounced dead. He was 71.
What’s your favorite role or movie of his? Please comment.
Zane Says 